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Given it’s doubtful I’ll finish any more books before the year ends (especially since I’ve been on eaglet watch for days), I’m going to go ahead and list my top 10 books read this year.

I set my goal at 80 books originally, but my day job had other ideas and with 10 hours being the average daily routine, I was often too tired to read. However, I buckled down at the end of the year while on holiday (when not watching baby eagles in Florida hatching) and managed to achieve my revised goal of 70 books. Here were my top ten in the order that I read them. The choice was difficult and I did swap a few out before I was done. Apologies to the authors for removals.

1. 50 Years of Silence by Jan Ruff-O’Herne (non-fiction)
2. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson (suspense)
3. The Seventh by S.D. Wasley (YA paranormal)
4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (suspense)
5. Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale (suspense)
6. Some Like it Charming by Megan Bryce (contemp romance)
7. Fire and Midnight by Sandra Renee Appet (contemp romance)
8. In the Land of Gold by Christina Angela Archer (western romance)
9. The Gender Secret by Bella Forrest (YA dystopian)
10. To Tempt the Saint by Megan Bryce (historical romance)

Biggest surprise? Two books by Megan Bryce made the list, an author I don’t think I’d ever heard of before. Both were Book Bub freebees and novella length, which I tended to concentrate on to make up some ground goal-wise toward the end. Loved both because of their nice blend of sentimentality and strong heroine characters and witty lines. I’ll be reading more from this author in the future.

I read several mainstream books either because they were Amazon Prime early reads or were free in the Prime lending library. Honestly, during the middle of the year, I was pretty tired of romance / erotic romance. This is how Girl in the Train, Everything We Keep and The Butterfly Garden ended up making the list.

I discovered what the fuss about Bella Forrest was about, the Amazon exclusive YA author of A Shade of Vampire and the Gender Games series, both of which I started and enjoyed. I eagerly await the 3rd Gender Games book as my first book of 2017.

Fire and Midnight by my sista from another mista, Sandra Renee Appet (aka Sandra Bunino) made the list because it was that good and I am super proud of her. I hope you’ll read it too.

50 Years of Silence made the list as the sole nonfiction representative. This is the true story of a woman pressed into sexual slavery by the Japanese. The War of Art and You Are a Badass were excellent honorable mentions in the non-fiction genre. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, while an interesting read, was a little too anal to be realistically achievable for me and that’s really a shame. If you saw my home, you’d understand the tragedy of it.

Historical westerns, mail order brides and Christmas novellas were go-to favorites for a good chunk of the year. In the Land of Gold was the sole one of this group to make the list because it was an awesome blend of romance and adventure.

Some favorites in the mix that didn’t make the top 10 but are worthy of mention: The Paladins by Julie Reece, Stiff Competition by Annalise Ryan, Lying Out Loud by Kody Keplinger, Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, and A Court of Roses and Thorns by Sarah J. Maas.

I finished up the Under the Never Sky series by Veronica Roth–adored this series even if none of the two books I read in 2016 make my top 10 list. They easily could have. The first in the series made my top ten in 2015, so that will have to suffice.

Onward to 2017… I have a couple of books that have been in Currently Reading status for a while. Hopefully I can buckle down and finish them up soon. I hate DNF’s and books that stall out. The latter group has yielded some awesome reads like The Time Traveler’s Wife when I’ve finally finished them up. Til next year’s post…

Just three days before her thirtieth birthday, acquisition editor for Starling Press, Sutton Callaway has buried the last of her family in the cemetery on the plot of land that she inherited.

After turning down the powerful and wealthy owner of Triple Bar-S Ranch to sell her inheritance and walk away from the obligations of running one of the biggest cattle ranches in West Texas, Sutton puts her Dallas condo on the market, resigns her position from SP, packs the contents of her life into boxes, and heads for the one place filled with bittersweet memories—Paradise Ranch.

Will Sutton be able to handle the pressures of being the newly appointed cattle baroness, the rough and tumble men under her employ, and the temptation of a sexy mystery man? Or will walking in her grandmother’s matriarchal boots be too much to fill?

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Claire Gillian is the pen name of an eclectic author of many short stories and novels (click on header to read more). Her debut novel, a romantic suspense entitled The P.U.R.E., will be published by J Taylor Publishing in April 2012.